Tom Grimes will read from his book Mentor: A Memoir at Texas State on Sept. 15.

STAFF REPORT

On Sept. 15, at 3:30 p.m., the Wittliff Collections on the seventh floor of the Alkek Library will host a reading and book signing with Tom Grimes. Admission is free and the public is welcome to attend.

Grimes’ new book Mentor: A Memoir relates his experiences with writer Frank Conroy as both a teacher and a friend.

Frank Conroy was the director of the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop when Grimes was a student. The book charts the intertwining fates of the two writers. It also chronicles the sharp edges of being a writer.

Grimes said of the book, in an interview for Paris Review, “There’s simply writing followed by the sometimes dreary and dispiriting (but occasionally thrilling and successful) mechanics of starting out as a writer. I write about this in Mentor because I remember what it was like for me.”

Grimes is the director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Texas State. He is the author of A Stone of the Heart, Season’s End, City of God, and Redemption Song. Grimes edited The Workshop: Seven Decades of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has twice been a finalist for the PEN/Nelson Algren Award.